Step One: Don't Buy It

Did Christopher L. Hoyt, the author of How To Raise Your Daughter Without Reading A Book: One Dad's Rules to Live By, realize the irony of its title?

The editor?

Anyone involved in its publication?

I guess not.
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Narrative Panache: Game Change

Respected historian Stephen Ambrose liked to tell an anecdote about having been contacted by President Eisenhower to write his biography. However, as reported by Richard Rayner in a New Yorker article, such a request probably never took place. John Eisenhower, son of the late president, said that Ambrose had a "tendency to sacrifice fact to narrative panache."

One of my favorite contemporary "nonfiction" authors, Bob Woodward, writes in a style that often reads like a novel. More than a few people have questioned the veracity of Woodward's reporting. Still, at the end of the day, I can walk away from a work by Ambrose or Woodward feeling that I was given a fair and accurate telling of history.

Not so much the case with this year's Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. Heilemann and Halperin's previous effort, The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008, was more political analysis than reportage. So, one could forgive the subjective musings which were freely mixed in with factual content. However, Game Change is a purported to be a chronicle of events leading up to Barack Obama's victory over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Thus, I held the duo to a different standard in terms of accuracy.

...Full Post at Edward Copeland on Film
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Fahrenheit Four-Fifty-FUN!

Because "Fuck Me, Harlan Ellison" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

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Team Gitmo

There's gotta be something in the Geneva Convention about this.

I'm really gonna have to read one of these books someday just to figure out what all the hoopla is about.

From Fox News: (bold added)

Gitmo Detainees Serve Time By Playing Games, Talking to Family on Skype, Taking Classes

While the 181 men being held in the prison wait to learn their fates after the administration fell through on its January 2010 deadline to move them out, 90 percent now live in a communal environment that includes Skype, the online video chat service, and access to a 17,000-book library.

That's up from 40 percent of detainees a year ago.

The "Twilight" series, a hit among so-called "tweens," is also popular with detainees, the camp's "librarian" said.

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Cosa Nancy

I'm about a third of the way through 2006's "The Godfather's Revenge" -- Mark Winegardner's continuation of Mario Puzo's famous saga. The novel is set between the events depicted in "The Godfather II" and "III."

I'm not quite sold on it yet. There have already been two or three references to oranges and, frankly, the motif is getting tired.

But, Winegardner does throw in neat bits like a scene with the Johnny Fontane character and his daughter. While marching in a Columbus Day parade, the daughter complains about her feet hurting from the high-heel boots she's wearing. If Fontane is meant to be Frank Sinatra, then his daughter is Nancy Sinatra. Thus, it's not too far fetched to suggest that Winegardner is making a sly reference to her big hit song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'." Only, in this case, they're not.
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